


Miss Stark, may I?

by English is my death (Lena013)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Drama, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Drama, Tony hates himself, gender switch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26459665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lena013/pseuds/English%20is%20my%20death
Summary: Tony quarters himself for his thoughts, curses himself for not stopping it. Tony lets fate do it to her again, in the most perverse way possible. Tony laughed at her life.Версия на русском.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark, Peter Parker/fem!Tony Stark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Miss Stark, may I?

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I Will not embellish: Tony is 47 years old, Peter is 16.  
> 2) it's already normal for us to ship a very young guy and a man thirty years older than him when fem!Peter this is also becoming normal, but I haven't met fem!Tony and Peter, because they're a pretty scary couple.  
> There is something about this pairing, I don't know what it is, but I wanted to paint it.  
> 3) it's hard to understand, I know.  
> 4) English is not my native language, please understand and forgive me.

"Miss Stark", as soon as Peter started to address her like that, something inside Tony's chest lit up, burned out and fell deep, deep down, and the woman herself closed her eyes so as not to see all this, "can I see your designs?" 

_'Ideally, Peter, you should go out the door and get out of here',_ Tony wanted to say every time Parker started asking for something, but the words were blocked by an impenetrable barrier in the form of his _begging-beautiful-bright look._

"Friday, give Peter access", Stark says absently, before turning back to the chip with a soldering iron in his hand.

"Access granted, Mr. Parker", said AI, and it was as if Tony could see a _child_ smiling, dimples appearing, and the proverbial, eternal, _so pleasant to hear…_

"Thank you, miss Stark!" 

Her hand twitched, the controller shorted out, and the chip fell irrevocably into the trash — _just like her life._

* * *

The last thing Tony expected was that this would happen to her again. There was enough shit in her life, not just superhero stuff, not just incurable alcoholism, but all sorts _of-personal-problems._ Tony swore to herself that she _would never do it again_ , that she had had enough, that she didn't even have a heart left in her chest. Tony Stark certainly didn't want to fall in love at the age of forty-six.

 _'What the hell is, Universe?'_ no one answered her. Tony thinks her Cupid had a big night out the day she walked into a small apartment in Queens. When she smiled at a startled May Parker and stepped over the cracked threshold of their house. When she saw a fifteen-year-old boy and offered him a single task... and then she let him keep the suit, gave him her phone number, _allowed_ him to call her, _allowed_ him to come to Stark Tower, _allowed_ him to wake up her rusty heart.

In principle, it's surprisingly easy to fall in love with Peter. He was kind, intelligent, polite, charming, heroic — _all the things she lacked in herself._ Tony did not know that such people still exist, they seemed to her a child's invention from fairy tales about knights and princesses; Is it not funny, from her thoughts, if Peter is a knight, then she is a Princess? _Ha, Fate, very funny._ No, Tony is more of a fairy godmother, but even here she managed to screw up: godmothers should not look at their godchildren.

Tony often thinks that for her, Hell is a vast boiling ocean that you can't get out of, that cooks you alive, that you drown in, and then it all starts over again. She has so many sins, so many regrets, that it would be more than possible to distribute them to all the employees of the Tower and still remain for half the city. She's disgusting to herself. Tony realizes that she has reached the point where you get enough air to scream out loud, and then you just exhale hard, _because you don't have the strength to scream._

Do not believe all the tabloids and gossip-hungry journalists — Tony Stark has a heart and it is very wounded, bleeding and hidden behind iron armor. Peter sees in her a deep-hidden sensitivity that she shows to him. At first, it seems a little strange to him. Unexpected. Peter admired miss Stark even before she announced to the world that she was Iron Man (Peter's parents often referred to the development of Stark Industries, separately noting the brilliant mind of the owner of the company, although having bad habits). Little Peter didn't know what habits they were talking about, but now he saw them in person. The first and most disastrous — alcohol. Peter didn't know you could drink so much for so long. Tony drank to sleep; Tony drank to keep her hands from shaking; Tony drank to drown out other people's screams; Tony drank to forget the faces of those who came to her in nightmares; Tony drank to make her heart completely disappear with its stupid, completely out of place, love. Tony drinks in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, and gets drunk almost to death at night.

"Why do you drink so much?" Peter asks, immediately biting his tongue, because it was at least tactless, and at most none of his business. Stark glares at him, a drunken smile spreading across her face.

"Because I don't see the point in not drinking", lies are pure, sincere, honed to automatism. Tony is an unrecognized expert on how to turn people away from him and get rid of stupid questions. Peter is a smart boy, and he knows it's none of his business, even though he feels something more behind the words, something terrible, something that kills her again and again.

Tony actually has citizenship at the very bottom of the dark pool.

The second bad habit has a more complex character, resembling a mental disorder rather than a wayward tendency of a multi-faceted nature. Tony a lot and lot works. And there would be nothing significantly disastrous in this if she didn't lock herself in the workshop for several days, forgetting about such things as sleep or food. Tony is an unrecognized genius at self-destruction. Working on some project that interests her may take her captive and not let her go until it's finished. The work in her case sounds like voluntary servitude, because when she left the workshop after four days of long and hard work, it was anyone but Tony Stark. Untidy, worn clothes, hands stained with machine oil and paint, fingers in burns and blisters on the head scarecrow, she smelled appropriate image, shoulders drooping like they kept the entire planet, and his eyes... Oh, those crazy, tortured, dark eyes, in the depths of which burns unquenchable fire the _idea_ several years will haunt Peter, who was worried that miss Stark long to respond and is not even open his messages.

"Are you all right?" he asks across the kitchen, shuffling around.

"Sure, Spider", she replies, after a sip of chilled water. Tony smiles at him and salutes him with a glass glass.: "Remember, kid, I'm always fine".

It was the biggest and most blatant lie of her busy life. Peter didn't believe her, but he nodded, watching a woman's slender hand reach for a beautiful bottle of Scotch.

The third observation, unbelievable-but-the fact is, she's standoffish. Despite huge receptions, parties, hundreds of different men in his bed and a few loyal, loyal, good friends — Tony Stark chooses to be alone. Tony has been lonely since childhood; Tony doesn't know how to build relationships with people; Tony couldn't be open for a long time. Tony has big trust issues. She had been betrayed too often, her heart broken too often, rejected too often for her love. And now — again. Tony is like in Groundhog Day, where everything just repeats itself, where every action, every choice leads to the same end result. It's not about them — it's about her. Despite her clever head and talented, skilled hands, she destroys everything she touches. _It crumbles and is carried away into the distance._

"Miss Stark, may I ask?" Peter says softly, bringing food to tired _again_ Tony.

"Already", she grins, picking up the bread from the sandwich she made for her. "Speaking, maloy", Stark says, seeing Peter waiting for a clear answer.

"Why do you live alone?" Peter bit his cheek and looked down at the floor. Tony puts down his sandwich, not expecting this question, and scans Peter with a long, intense stare that feels like a seventh sense. "I'm sorry, I didn't—"

"I don't like people", Tony interrupts. And it's true, _surprisingly simple._ Peter is silent, digesting the four words, clearly aware that he has asked an inappropriate question.

"I'm sorry, miss Stark..." 

"Nothing, kid", Tony says, putting down the sandwich, the hunger subsiding.

Peter doesn't remember exactly what his parents said about Tony Stark and her notoriety, but clearly not what he discovered on his own. Tony Stark is a broken man who ends what life didn't end by breaking himself to the end. Peter would love to help her, to save her from herself, but he doesn't know how or if he can.

Tony sees himself as a fourth inescapable _addiction_.

 **'Miss Stark',** from Peter Parker and Tony, is ready to do anything, break into a cake, but fulfill a modest request, just to listen to it again and again. Peter utters these two words with a barely noticeable breath, but Tony notices and is thrilled by it every damn time, like she's fifteen. _How pathetic she is._

* * *

Tony sits in his workshop with Peter, it's becoming a habit. Tony is bad, Tony is ugly, Tony is disappointed in life over and over again. Tony works, bends the metal, melts it, and takes a sip from the bottle of whiskey he brought. Peter was wary when he noticed this, because miss Stark usually doesn't drink in the workshop, adding to her already precarious health. Tony is angry, Tony is tired, Tony is tired of being responsible for the whole ungrateful world — Tony is in pain.

She feels Peter somehow invisible sense of, this same sense of says, that she now snaps. Irrevocable, hopeless, hopeless. Tony laughs softly and with a hint of insanity.

"Miss Stark...?" calls Peter, clutching the seat of the chair he's sitting on.

Tony turns to him, purses his lips, and thinks it's all gone to hell. She walks up to him, smiles, takes a deep breath, and says: "Peter, I might be about to do the stupidest, most wrong, and most terrible thing in my life", Tony breathed out heavily, looking up into those big, worried eyes. "No, sit down", she stopped him as he tried to get up. "And close your eyes". 

_God, Tony, stop!_ Peter obediently obeys, although a dozen questions are already forming in his mind. Tony looks up and can't stop looking at. Such trust... and she's about to ruin everything. _Again_.

Tony touches his lips with an impetuous, chaste touch, smearing them with his tongue as if tasting them, and then pulls away. Peter doesn't get it right away. And then he looks at Tony, who has already returned to her Desk, with huge, startled eyes. Was he imagining it now? Did he just fall out of reality and then end up in an alternate reality? Or… Tony Stark, _the same Tony Stark,_ his nerd-kid-burden Peter Parker, kissed? Peter mentally asks to stop the planet, it's time for him to go.

Peter is silent for so long that Tony becomes more and more tense, cursing herself with every expletive she knows. She doesn't exactly expect a touch on her shoulder, which turns around with a soldering iron in her hands, but the spider's reflexes save Parker and he doesn't notice anything. His gaze is unreadable, but Tony is waiting for accusations, waiting for contempt, waiting for a reason to finally cut out her heart and forget that she ever had one.

"Miss Stark, may I?" his eyes wander over her face, his voice hoarse, almost a whisper, as if he's afraid they're being overheard, _as if they're still doing something wrong._

Tony understands his question, Tony is dying inside, Tony thinks she's gone mad.

"Do you know what you're talking about?" she asks softly, as if in a second the sky will collapse on them and lower them to the Underworld.

Peter gathered his resolve and took a step toward her, leaving no room for escape.

"Yes", he breathes, and leans toward her.

_Tony thinks there's an ocean waiting for her in Hell._


End file.
